2/27/2012(Korea): combined preliminary tournament starts!!!

20 amateurs selected and included to this preliminary.

http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/bc.html

!! Is this every player xD

Let's pay attention to Fujisawa Rina.

She got a bye into the next round somehow (Prelim tournament maybe?)

It is notable because she is 13, the youngest person to get professional grade in Japan ever (beating out Cho)

There are 12 players seeded in main tournament.
2 finalist from the last, Korea(3), China(2), Japan(2), Taiwan(1) and 2 chosen by sponsor.

Fujisawa Lina is not youngest. Cho became pro when he was 11.

Cho Chikun and Fujisawa Rina both were pro in Japan at 11, but Rina was younger when she became shodan. Cho Hunhyun was a pro at 9 in Korea, but not until 13 or 14 in Japan, depending on how you look at it.

Age is counted differently in Korea, but to be precise about Cho Hunhyun, was born March 10, 1953. He was pro in Korea at October 1962, and went to Japan in 1963. In July of 1966, he passed the insei league honsen to make it decided that he was pro at the age of 13. In 1967, when he was 14, he was officially admitted as shodan by the Nihonkiin. That same year, in October, he became 2 dan.

In either event, it's probably safe to say that Rina is the youngest to have been admitted as shodan by the Nihonkiin.

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be immersed

Hong Malgunsem(1d) is participating this tournament also. He failed to become pro in Korea due to age. And he moved to Japan and opened go school. He became pro through Kansai go asoc. Fujisawa Lina was his student and became pro. Teacher and student is at same rank.

I'll plug a page I started on Sensei's: http://senseis.xmp.net/?ProfessionalRecords. Of course Valerio can take all the credit for the page being accurate.

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Occupy Babel!

The big names from Japan seem to outright boycott these open preliminaries, but they are not seeded either, 90% of the contestants from Japan are very young aand not yet at the top (some are young and already close). If you look at the Chinese delegation in comparison, they have so many big names, who do not bother to play the preliminary. Why is it like this?

Seeded players in main tournament,

2 players from final; Lee Sedol, Gu Li
Korea; Park Junghwan, Choi Chulhan, Won Seongjin(top 3 from Korean ranking excluding Lee Sedol)

China; Kong Jie, Jiang Weijie

Japan; Yamashita Keigo, Iyama Yuuta

Taiwan; Chen Shiyuan

Sponsor selected; Choi Jung, Lee Donghun

Big name Japanese players boycotting ?
It is possible that they don't want to pay expenses to participate this tournament. There is no game fee during preliminary tournament(I think.).

Most of strong Chinese players are participating this tournament(They had their own tournament to select and 60 players were selected.).

I don't think the term "boycott" is correct. There is simply not enough incentive to go.

The preliminary was completed.

http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/bc.html

52 players advanced from preliminary will be joined by seeded players.

Seeded players in main tournament,

2 players from final; Lee Sedol, Gu Li
Korea; Park Junghwan, Choi Chulhan, Won Seongjin(top 3 from Korean ranking excluding Lee Sedol)

China; Kong Jie, Jiang Weijie

Japan; Yamashita Keigo, Iyama Yuuta

Taiwan; Chen Shiyuan

Sponsor selected; Choi Jung, Lee Donghun

Main tournament will start 3/3.

Isn't playing the strongest in a preliminary match good enough? (Yi Changho, Xie He, Chen Yaoye, Piao Wenyao, Tan Xiao etc. all played in the preliminaries) Maybe there will be more participants next time when the youngsters that played through the preliminary (Ida Atsushi, Murakawa Daisuke) do well in the main tournament. Let us hope so.

I think you are expecting too much when you expect Fujisawa Rina to kick ass shortly after becoming professional. Give her time to grow.

Not when you're a professional and need to pay your own way. It's great to see a lot of players take that option, but there's little incentive for top placing Japanese pros to enter unless they want to spend time visiting Korea.

I won't run the numbers, but it does seem like the Japanese players did quite respectably in the prelims.

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Occupy Babel!

According to http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/bc.html 2 out of 27 (jp tagged) qualified. Games went 16-25.



Cheers,
Vesa

A little quick fiddling (i.e. may contain mistakes) in excel gives the following:

Note that the number of Wins, and therefore losses, (268) plus the number of surviving qualifiers (52) equals the number of players (320), so the figures may even be correct! Overall the number of games per player is small, but it is hard to ignore the difference shown between China and 'the rest' IMHO.

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Dave Sigaty
"Short-lived are both the praiser and the praised, and rememberer and the remembered..."
- Marcus Aurelius; Meditations, VIII 21

I believe most of the performance difference is easily explained by the fact that Chinese players played a local preliminary first, while Koreans participated in what looks like full numbers and Japanese players are mainly youngsters (many <20 years and recently turned professional) eager to go to every possible tournament within reach.

P.S. And yes, 16-25 and two qualified players is quite respectable (not a success, but respectable) for this circumstances.

The numbers are misleading because the Chinese delegation consists of the country's better players while from Korea everybody played...

A new international Chinese-sponsored tournament will start this month and it has a format similar to BC Card: http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/bl.html
Korea will send also around 60 players so after this preliminaries we can better compare the performances of the two countries under the same conditions.

Pairing for round of 64

Choi Chulhan, Park Junghwan and Iyama Yuuta failed to reach the next round.

Exciting game was between Moon Byungkwon(a) vs Kong Jie(won by 0.5).

Ida Atsushi and Murakawa Daisuke advanced to next round.

Round of 32 will be played 3/15/2012.

http://igokisen.web.fc2.com/wr/bc.html